7 posts from May 2010

May 30, 2010

It's time for a comedy break with Rajiv Nema, an actor and comedian originally from Indore, MP, the state I grew up in as well. I've seen him in a couple of Naatak productions in the SF Bay Area. In this video, Nema plays a provincial chap from Indore explaining to his wife the power of the computer, or should I say Kumpootar? Watch it, it's quite hilarious (Hindi comprehension required).

May 29, 2010

Comparing China and India has become a popular pastime in some quarters, including aspects of their national economies, political systems, infrastructure, human development, environment, and more. In this audio interview, Romesh Vaitilingam interviews Pranab Bardhan of UC Berkeley about his new book ‘Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: Assessing the Economic Rise of China and India’. It is a brisk yet insightful overview (via Robin Varghese/3QD).

May 26, 2010

Here is an inspiring lecture in which "Kavita Ramdas of the Global Fund for Women talks about three encounters with powerful women who fight to make the world better—while preserving the traditions that sustain them." On her bio page is this quote: "Being a philanthropist doesn't mean necessarily writing a huge check. It can mean mobilizing your community to start asking questions."

May 24, 2010

Why did democracy take root in India against all odds? What are its distinguishing features? What should we make of its attempts to combat inequalities among its people, especially via reservations? Over six decades later, how close is it to Ambedkar's inspiring vision of democracy?

The Republic of India began life as an unlikely nation. Gaining independence in 1947, India adopted a democratic form of governance, a liberal constitution, and secular public institutions (at least in intent if often not in practice). None of these sprang from a living indigenous tradition.[1] Rather, they were chosen by an elite class of Indians that had developed a taste for them via its exposure to the West, and had even acquired some experience in representative self-rule in the closing decades of the British Raj. Many observers thought the experiment was doomed to failure. Among them was the stodgy imperialist Winston Churchill, who felt that if the British left, India would ‘fall back quite rapidly through the centuries into the barbarism and privations of the Middle Ages.’ Indians were unfit to govern themselves, and needed ‘the sober and resolute forces of the British Empire.’

Doubters abounded for decades after independence. Unlike so many post-colonial nations, including those in South Asia, the continued existence of democracy in India—its fair elections and peaceful transfers of power—puzzled not just the lay observers, but it also became, according to historian Ramachandra Guha,

an anomaly for academic political science … That India ‘could sustain democratic institutions seems, on the face of it, highly improbable,’ wrote the distinguished political scientist Robert Dahl, adding: ‘It lacks all the favorable conditions.’ ‘India has a well-established reputation for violating social scientific generalizations,’ wrote another American scholar, adding, ‘Nonetheless, the findings of this article furnish grounds for skepticism regarding the viability of democracy in India.’ [2]

The naysayers rightly saw democracy as an outgrowth of a particular historical experience in the West, rooted in a consciousness we now call modernity. They spoke of the conditions thought to be necessary for the flourishing of democracy: an egalitarian social order, an ethos of individualism, and a culture of secular politics and pluralist tolerance. India had mostly the opposite: a deeply hierarchical social order, subservience of the individual to family and community, and a culture of political quietism, though it did have a kind of tolerance (more on this below). Only a tiny class of Indians saw themselves as citizens of a nation-state, or could lay claim to political participation. Nor had the masses agitated to be rid of the hundreds of kings in as many princely states of British India, though discontent did exist in pockets. Indians were notoriously diverse, with identities spanning caste, class, region, custom, language, religion, and more, all impediments to a shared ideal of citizenship. Indeed, how was democracy expected to survive in such inhospitable terrain?

May 17, 2010

Here is an excellent investigative piece full of very human stories on what I think is India's first and only economic safety net for its citizens. Launched in 2006 via the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), it promises 100 days of employment to one member of every rural household each year. However, things have not gone according to plan and Mehboob Jeelani tells us why.

Until 2004, India had 456 million people living below the international poverty line. Yet after four years of NREGA, the number of poor, which was expected to decline, has increased from 456 to 488 million. So what went wrong? ...

NREGA can appear as a success. After all, some records show the government provided employment to 44.1 million people in the last four years. The Ministry of Rural Development believes it has rescued thousands of farmers from debt through cash payments. The scheme has decreased urban migration by 30 percent, according to a survey by the Centre for Civil Society, and has increased the bargaining power of unskilled labourers, forcing private contractors to pay as much as 130 rupees per day to compete with NREGA. Through the construction of shovel-ready projects, NREGA has also vastly improved rural infrastructure. If the 2009 election results are any indication, wrote Mainstream weekly, NREGA and the money it injected into rural India ensured the re-election of the Congress. Thus, Manmohan Singh became the first prime minister to return to power after completing a full five-year term since Jawaharlal Nehru.

But NREGA hasn’t been an unqualified success. Today, the same welfare economists and grassroots activists who championed NREGA openly criticise it. They contend the government is killing a good scheme. Dreze and Roy think the government, instead of ensuring NREGA’s proper implementation, is watering down the social welfare elements by converging it with other government programmes. Several studies, including governmental ones, acknowledge widespread corruption in NREGA—fabricating vouchers is just one method of diverting funds. Caste-based discrimination is widespread. There is also a lack of political coordination between the Centre and state and local bodies. Most importantly, the promise of 100 days of guaranteed employment hasn’t been fulfilled. This leads one to wonder, four years on, what’s gone wrong with India’s Keynesian scheme?

May 13, 2010

It is as subjects, indeed social subjects, that we know, we decide on truth, and we judge right and wrong. As social subjects we decide on the rules of “communicative action” in which these activities take place. And these rules include the existence of such a thing as objective truth, and the active belief that people are capable of arriving at it. If we are truth-seeking animals, we might of course ask how we got that way, but we must also ask what our truths are and what are the rules for arriving there.

This of course entails giving up any pretense to absolute knowledge. It entails allowing oneself to enter into discussion, to submit what one says to the judgment of others, to be proven wrong by them, to be seen as fallible, and thus to realise that any particular piece of knowledge is always tentative, always demanding verification. This in turn implies a commitment to a communicative process in which we are always in dialogue with others, and in which they are always looking over our shoulders and commenting on what we claim to be true.

Truth shifts historically and is framed according to one’s disciplinary standpoint. It is never absolute but is objective. It is never raised above humans, but always takes place with, for, and about others. This is even, or especially, true of science. Its knowledge is necessarily provisional, it can be challenged and even overturned – which makes it dramatically different from the supposed “absolute knowledge” conferred by religious faith. But this also places science within a larger human project, rather than supporting any scientific claim to ultimacy.

May 06, 2010

I liked this Al Jazeera interview by Riz Khan, in which Tariq Ramadan, Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University, talks about a range of issues that relate to the experience of Muslims in the West. (via 3QD)

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New Book by Namit Arora

“The Lottery of Birth reveals Namit Arora to be one of our finest critics. In a raucous public sphere marked by blame and recrimination, these essays announce a bracing sensibility, as compassionate as it is curious, intelligent and nuanced.” —Pankaj Mishra